


A Soldier From A Common Swashbuckler

by SpiteMeister



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Competent Jaskier | Dandelion, I promise there's a plot, It's not canon compliant but it is cannon compliant, M/M, Pirate Captain Geralt, Sort of seventeenth century golden age of piracy, This is actually beta'd, but it is secret so far, on this exact pirate ship yennefer and jaskier are somehow friends, surgeon Yennefer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26113471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiteMeister/pseuds/SpiteMeister
Summary: Jaskier is fresh out of Oxenfurt and wants to become a bard. But he also wants to sing about adventures on the high seas. What shall we do with a deluded bard?
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 11
Kudos: 82





	A Soldier From A Common Swashbuckler

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE FOR READING THIS: I posted it with the "Rich Text" feature, so the "creator's style" button will probably help this hot mess make sense.
> 
> I really would not have the cannon balls to post this if I hadn't had the support of S_Alphaios to run a tight ship.
> 
> There are some moments in this first chapter that include immature sexualized comments about a captive. It's not good, but I would like to build these characters up.
> 
> This chapter is basically proof of concept. I have whole arcs for every character in this fic (and even for Roche, who provided this fic title in The Wild Hunt), but I don't know if I should take this fic to its end.
> 
> OH ALSO. I really do like constructive criticism, especially about my syntax/grammar. Please do comment! If you have comments about the characters/relationships about characters, or just general characterization comments, I would like to hear you out

The docks smelled like piss and clear, salty air. As Jaskier closed his eyes, he listened to the steady _ thump thump thump _ of thick ropes hitting against the sturdy wood of ships. He opened his eyes. It was a lovely spring afternoon in Novigrad. The sky had been alternating between clear and cloudy for the last few days and it looked like clouds would take the evening. From where he sat on a barrel in front of a tavern, he could see both far down the docks and well up one of the city’s avenues.

“Fish here! Get yer fish, fresh from this mornin’!” one vendor bellowed nearby. “Smelt! Haddock! Seabass! A’right there, sir, even got oysters for the missus!”

“Oi, get ploughed!”

Jaskier huffed a quiet laugh to himself, focusing back down on the string he was replacing on his lute. Never a dull moment with these rough sea folks.

Which brought him back to his goal. How was he going to find someone who would agree to his venture?

For the last weeks, he had wandered the docks of Novigrad, inquiring high and low for crews willing to take on a bard who wished to sing of adventures on the sea. At best, he was met with bemused stares:  _ why would anyone want to be at sea during this war? _ At worst, he was uproariously laughed out of taverns:  _ this bard musta been kicked in the head by an ox as a child! No crew round these parts willin to take on a useless pair o hands, less he’s offerin somethin else! _

Well. That had just made Jaskier more determined to prove that he could do anything he put his mind to. He stood up with a great stretch and walked into the tavern behind him.  _ The Golden Sturgeon _ . At this time of day, the place was only a little busy. Jaskier had learned from experience, though, that it was wise to find a good spot early and hold on to it tooth and nail. The barkeep sent him a perfunctory nod when he sat down on a stool in a corner where he could warm up with some scales. He was just barely through his third scale when there was a suspicious lull in conversation across the entire tavern. It was gone in a heartbeat, though, and Jaskier nearly missed what had caused it.

Jaskier, an astute observer of human culture and quirks, had determined in his first few days roaming the docks that very little could make a roughened group of sailors hush up. Rather than bring a halt to his playing, he slipped into rote scales and surreptitiously eyed the man approaching the barkeep. The newcomer was perhaps barely taller than Jaskier but certainly more muscular. A cavalier hat (devoid of the ostrich feather that Jaskier so admired in fashion) and a headscarf in some dark color covered the man’s hair, and a bridge coat slung over his shoulder hid part of his body. His clothes were worn but well-cared for and his boots showed signs of the ever-present salt residue that came with a life spent at sea. What drew almost every eye in the tavern, though, was the flintlock pistol peeking out of a holster on his bandolier.  _ And Melitele’s tits, there were three larger and well-worn but empty holsters next to it. _ The man in question was rolling his sleeves up to his elbows as he ordered ale from the barkeep and Jaskier could see faded black ink across one of the man’s forearms. The tattoos drew his eye up and up toward a bright silver hoop through the newcomer’s earlobe. He might have been staring too long or thinking too loudly because the man suddenly whipped around to look Jaskier dead in the eye. Under the gaze of the brightest gold he had ever beheld, Jaskier covered up his sudden nervousness with a brazen grin. In a split second, Jaskier found himself acknowledged, analyzed, and dismissed as a threat by the man who then snorted, turning to thank the barkeep and pay for his ale. Something shriveled in Jaskier’s heart in that moment. More than he wanted to prove to himself that he could be a bard-at-sea, he wanted to never be laughed at by that man ever again.

Golden Eyes, as Jaskier dubbed him, took a seat next to a window overlooking the port. Jaskier could have sworn that others had been sitting at that table but it seemed that a few tables had cleared out. Odd. Jaskier wrote it off and occasionally caught Golden Eyes staring out at the docks with a furrowed brow.

“Oi, you playing or what?” the barkeep growled at Jaskier, who smiled sheepishly.

“At your service, my good man,” he replied graciously.

As it turned out, the patrons of this particular bar had no patience for his iterations of “landlubber” classics, and mostly spent the next hour jeering at him and howling for shanties. Food was lobbed in his direction.

“I’m so glad that I could just bring you all together like this,” Jaskier finally sneered at his hostile crowd. “Unbelievable.” He cut his losses and put his lute away. Some of the food that was thrown at him actually … didn’t look all that bad. He pocketed a few pieces of the bread, and remembered the man that had come in. And who had now witnessed this whole debacle. Well. He might as well try his luck. He snatched a drink away from the oblivious barkeep and made his way to the man in the corner.

Even though Golden Eyes kept his steady gaze off Jaskier, he knew the man was watching. The bard took a sip and spoke. “I love how you just sit in the corner and brood.” Not even a look his way but Jaskier detected a small long-suffering sigh.

“I’m here to drink alone.”

The rasp of the voice must be from years spent yelling orders during storms, Jaskier decided. He began blabbering, only aware of what he was saying by the last few words: “ … bread in his pants waiting.” He grimaced, slowing down like he could stop the words from coming out. All it did was make the words easier to decipher in the din of the tavern. At least most of the patrons were avoiding this corner. Jaskier hurried to say something else, sitting down across from Golden Eyes like he could make the other man forget what he had just said. “You must have some review for me. Three words or less.”

The last thing that Jaskier expected was to get an unblinking, flat stare and a curt dismissal of the content of his songs. At least there was nothing in there about being a  _ landlubber _ . As Golden Eyes stood to leave, Jaskier felt like his window of opportunity was closing. With a hasty goodbye to the barkeep, Jaskier stumbled out of  _ The Golden Sturgeon _ after the man.

“Look, I have always been a quick learner and I will be naught but silent backup —” he was blathering again “— and you could be the greatest, most famous muse of our era, nay, of all time!” At that, he got a deep sigh from the man walking in front of him.

“Listen, bard,” Golden Eyes turned to address him while shoving his coat on, “I’m not on the market for new crew. Not  _ inexperienced _ crew. The sea is no place for civilians these days, let alone delusional bards. Go home. Be safe.” And with that, Golden Eyes nodded and left Jaskier standing in the middle of the docks in the dying light of day.  _ The audacity to dismiss him!  _ It was a gut-punch that he wanted to fight every morning for the rest of his life.

Never let it be said, however, that Jaskier was anything but downright plucky. He asked around after a man fitting Golden Eyes’ description and eventually found himself hiding behind crates adjacent to a two-masted ship flying Redanian colors. This part of Portside was mostly where the larger merchant vessels docked these days so Jaskier assumed that the man was an officer employed by one of the larger Redanian trading companies. If he squinted, he could even see the outline of  _ The Golden Sturgeon _ . Ah. So that was why the man had been preoccupied. There was nothing  _ specifically _ spectacular about the ship but Jaskier would be the last to say he knew anything about boats to begin with. Sailors and dockhands were milling about and it seemed like the ship’s crew members were fairly adamant about the dockhands staying  _ on the docks _ . Jaskier never would have noticed if he weren’t trying to figure out a way onto the blasted ship.

So it seemed like he would have to take a sneakier approach. While workers took a break for supper, he spent the better part of an hour prying open one of the crates, easing the slats to and fro. When the night skies opened up, Jaskier cursed softly. The rain might hide some of his sounds but it was sure to make the waiting miserable. He stuffed himself and his lute into the erstwhile dry crate, waiting for daylight.

The gravity of what he was doing hit him when he was jolted awake by the movement of his crate.

He was a stowaway.

On an unknown ship.

During a war.

The aches of his muscles made him downright cranky and he glared at the bottles of rum sharing his crate like they should have talked him out of this. Thankfully, his lute was safely tucked in beside him, non-judgmental as ever. Except for the fact that the lute was being very judgmental in this magic moment.

“I think they gave us extra this time,” a voice said from outside the crate. Jaskier felt his stomach plummet and he put a hand over the lute to shut it up.. He would be found out. But then it occurred to him that that could be a blessing saving him from an awkward discovery aboard the ship once it was far out at sea and his spirits seemed to rise for a moment before he remembered three days ago when another person had been discovered in his position and the poor sod’s body was still hanging in one of Novigrad’s squares —

His thoughts raced for any lie he could tell to get out of this situation.

“Just put it in the back. It’ll be good to have extra rations,” added a second voice. Jaskier almost laughed hysterically.  _ There was now a likelihood that he would become literal rations. _ The crate was set down none-too-gently in a dank storage area and several other crates were stacked on top of it.

Well fuck.

~~

Jaskier learned quickly that someone entering the storage meant that it was mealtime. That meant that he could count the passage of time. In turn, that meant he could keep track of how long it had been since he had eaten. So, over the course of at least two days, he had wiggled around in the crate to find the best point of escape, managing to kick out two of the slats. Over the course of those two days, he also decided that this was a shitty adventure and he would sneak off at the next port. But eventually, exhaustion, hunger, and thirst got the better of him and he put aside his escape plans. When he was hauled out of the crate, delirious and babbling, he couldn’t put up any fight. He was liminally aware of being laid out somewhere before he finally fell into a restful sleep.

It seemed he had just closed his eyes when an ear-shattering  _ BOOM _ shook him awake, and he frantically clawed at ropes tangled up around his body. Another  _ BOOM _ had him shrieking, and he realized that he was tangled in a hammock. He tried to fight his way out of it, and discovered after a few more moments that his ankles and wrists were, in fact, tied together. So he waited, trussed up like a holiday roast by his own bed (that traitor), while cannons kept firing off above him. Jaskier shut his eyes and hummed arpeggios while a flurry of shouting and activity up top turned into pistols firing and steel clashing and wood splintering. If he soiled himself, that was no one’s business but his own.

The battle was, paradoxically, both shorter and longer than he thought battles would be. The fighting ebbed away into what sounded like scampering, many pairs of feet running thither and yon, stomping about and thudding, and wood crashing against wood. At last, he felt the ship lurch and one last  _ BOOM _ accompanied by shattering wood and screams left his ears ringing. As that receded, he could hear people running past the room he was in.  _ Maybe _ , he thought stupidly,  _ they will forget that I’m here _ . But two sets of footsteps came close and stopped just outside the door, which, apparently, had swung open at some point.

There was a burst of cruel laughter. “Let’s bring him up like this!”

To his mortification, the two shadowy figures that reeked of blood, gunpowder, and sweat hoisted the hammock off its hooks and he was brought up into the brightest sunlight he’d ever experienced in his life. He closed his eyes tightly. He could not, unfortunately, block out the guffaws and belly-laughter from what sounded like many, many men. This whole thing was made worse by how Jaskier had twisted himself in the hammock, his head closer to the deck than his arse.

“Look what our nets dragged in!”

“Catch of the day!”

The taunts and jeers didn’t let up; they got worse — they got  _ lewd and crude  _ — until Jaskier’s ears burned and he wished he’d starved to death in that crate.

“What is this?” A voice growled over the ruckus.

“What, you don’t recognize our stowaway?” 

“Why is he up here?”

“Well, it would be hard to parade the whole crew in and out of that room to see the show.”

_ What show _ , Jaskier thought, hoping that they were only referring to his current predicament rather than a future predicament. He tried to crack one eye open. It was barely manageable and he only got an eyeful of wooden planks.

“Did the captain approve this?” The first voice asked. There was silence as the crew’s noises died down immediately. “Lambert, did the captain approve this?” Through the fog of despair, hopelessness, and humiliation, something in that voice caught Jaskier’s attention. It stuck out among the coarse speech of sailors. This must be some officer or another, that much was clear, but Jaskier couldn’t quite place it and fixating on it meant he almost missed the rest of the exchange.

“No, sir.” The one who had suggested this spectacle must be named Lambert, then.

“Did you clean your cannon, yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Bring the prisoner to the surgeon’s cabin, then make sure you have done what you were told.”

“Aye, sir.”

There were fewer jests at Jaskier’s expense but the chuckles were still audible. In what felt like the longest moments of his life, he realized that that voice had belonged to the person who found him in the crate. Through one eye, he watched the planks go by as he was brought below deck again. Just as he was able to open his other eye he was dumped on a table stained with suspicious-looking blotches of brown. The two men left.

“Finally awake, are you?” Jaskier thought his ears deceived him: a woman? He twisted around to get a better look. “Hold still, foolish boy.” A strong hand held his head down while another took the hammock away. Jaskier felt like one of those fish wriggling in nets, too stupid to realize that they were as good as dead.

“Are you going to kill me?” he whispered.

She — she  _ cackled _ . “Well,  _ I _ won’t. The others, though …” Was she bored by his line of inquiry? In any case, she clucked her tongue a few times. “You need a bath. Too bad there’s not much we can do about that.”

“What is going on?”

Silence. 

“Where am I?”

“If you’re hoping to tell us that you don’t remember how you got on this ship, you are out of luck. When Eskel pulled you from the crate you were going on about ‘adventure’ and that you were ‘so sorry about stowing away in Novigrad’ and that you ‘should have listened to Golden Eyes.’” Jaskier winced at the nickname. The woman laughed. “Thankfully for you,  _ Golden Eyes _ is too kind for his own good, and decided that we would wait until you were well enough to talk before we did anything like flogging you to within an inch of your life or just heaving you over the side and being done with it.” She paused again. “What were you thinking?”

“I wanted to be the greatest bard of our era,” Jaskier said, defeated.

“You’ll be the greatest joke of our era, carrying on like this.”

“Do you have any salt? You know, for my wounds?”

She slapped his shoulder. “Are you a playwright now? Trying out lines for your dramatic scenes?”

If it weren’t for the ropes still rubbing into his skin, Jaskier would feel like he was back in Oxenfurt with his friends. “No. Thought I was seeing a surgeon, not a comedienne.”

Rather than respond, the woman anchored a strong hand on his side and yanked him onto his back. The sudden motion very nearly winded him (and perhaps, he later reflected, this was not the move of a concerned physician but that of a friend). He met a fierce violet gaze that had just run over his entire body and being. “You are seeing the best damned surgeon alive and don’t you forget it.” It took a few moments for him to nod. She seemed to relax a bit. With a last look at his arms she let him go and turned to go to a nearby cabinet.

“What happened after I was found?” he eventually asked while she rummaged through supplies.

“I’ve been looking after you. You seem to be on the mend but don’t think that the worst is behind you. Outside of this cabin are men who would see you flayed for sport.” When she turned back, she was opening a jar. “Not that  _ Golden Eyes _ would let them of course. Never while he is in command.” She trailed off, looking thoughtful.

“What about you?”

Her lips quirked and she held up the jar, shaking it a little in his face. “This will sting enough on those rope burns.”

And did it ever.

Once the pain had faded, the surgeon, Yennefer, left him in the cabin to attend to other matters. He told himself that he wasn’t offended by the lock sliding home when she closed the door behind her. The cabin, underneath the ominous stains and bitter smells, had a bit of charm to it. All of the medical equipment gleamed in the candlelight; through a door that led farther into the cabin he saw her sleeping arrangement. It seemed downright sumptuous for life on a ship. Tapestries and hides covered just about every inch of the cabin, and chests were arranged neatly along the walls. In an open one he could see the tell-tale glitter of gems against a silky backdrop. The bed — not a hammock, he noted wryly — was piled with luxurious pillows and blankets. Just beyond all of that was an open hole in the floor with a bit of ladder sticking up. For the first time in his life he felt a little guilty about staring at a woman’s bed, so he deliberately turned his attention back to the area he was in. Cabinets ran along the walls, and, over another table that interrupted the cabinets, several books were secured to posts by thick chains. It seemed like a tidy setup. If this was only the surgeon’s cabin, the captain’s cabin was probably enormous. That didn’t quite fit with what he remembered about the size of the ship he had snuck onto.

Jaskier perked up a little when he heard voices outside of the cabin again. Yennefer returned with three men behind her. The first one after her was an older man who had so many deep lines etched on his face that Jaskier guessed he had never smiled a day in his life. His posture was rigid, almost military, and he kept one hand over the hilt of a wicked-looking cutlass. The next man was younger but no less frightening for it: deep scars ran down the right side of his face, leaving his lip turned up in a permanent sneer. He wore a striped shirt that was criss-crossed by bandoliers laden with all manner of pistols and vials. Two cutlasses crossed at his back and a bloodied bandage was around his left thigh. From behind  _ that _ man, two golden eyes were boring into Jaskier’s soul. Two golden eyes that had retained the unimpressed expression since Novigrad, it seemed. There was no hat shading them, for the man only wore the headscarf, managing to look simultaneously more casual and more important than the two men accompanying him.

It was the older man who spoke. “I gather that you, an otherwise intelligent and educated young man, have become aware of how very serious this situation is and of your own folly in its making?”

Jaskier nodded. 

The older man continued, “It is the right and duty of every captain to maintain order as he sees fit. As yet, you have been granted a stay of execution until you are able, consciously, to explain yourself in detail. What have you to say?”

So they were going to start the trial now. Jaskier gulped and found himself speechless. Or perhaps he was more cognizant of what he was about to say than he normally was. Did it matter? “I was in Novigrad searching for a crew that would take me on. I graduated from Oxenfurt several years ago. Wanted to try my hand at being a travelling bard.”

“Travelling bards usually, and wisely, stay on dry land,” the man with the deep scars pointed out. Based on the voice alone, this must have been Eskel.

Jaskier shrugged. “I wanted to try something else.”

“You are not the first to try,” the man replied.  _ And fail _ remained unsaid in the close air of the cabin.

Jaskier looked down at his nails and started picking at the cuticles. “I know. But I had to try.”

Someone (Jaskier suspected Golden Eyes) gave a dry, humorless laugh. “So you stowed away on a ship of dubious provenance?”

“It was flying Redanian colors,” Jaskier protested.

The others were silent until Golden Eyes himself declared, “You’re to stay below deck until we make port in a week or so. Then you’re gone. Any hint of trouble from you I’ll see you hanged.”

“Not walk the plank?” Jaskier could stab himself for saying that. He was almost —  _ almost _ — home free.

Something passed over Golden Eyes’ face. “As you wish.” He turned and left without a second glance. The other two men left after him but Yennefer stayed, closing the door after them.

“That went better than I expected,” she remarked lightly. 

“You expected them to be angrier?”

“I expected you to be stupider.”

Jaskier flopped back down on the table. A “week or so” below deck. He could do that. Then he sat up. “Wait, what’s the next port?”

As it turned out, getting to Lan Exeter from Novigrad took just slightly longer in the winter and spring months than it did in the summer and fall months. Otherwise, Yennefer assured him, this whole debacle “would be behind him in a matter of days rather than weeks.” He spent his time humming until Yennefer chucked his lute at him because “the gunners’ ears were bleeding from the sound of his voice so he had better stick to something he could keep in tune.”  _ Ouch _ . She had managed to slip away before he could come up with a retort. He tried to remind himself that he was doing better than most would in his position: he got to clean up a little (even though his bath was saltier than he liked), he got food (less salty than he liked), and he wasn’t prone to the dreaded sea-sickness (as long as he didn’t try to read any of the books that Yennefer passed to him). There was one more battle, after which he could proudly state that he had no need of a bath thank-you-very-much-Yennefer. But for the most part, he was more bored than he had ever been in his life. It was a special kind of torture and, as he told Yennefer one evening, it made him look forward to even her visits. To this, she responded that it was no wonder that her company was vastly preferable to his own and that she was pleased he was finally learning this.

But there came a day when he lost himself in a new melody. He felt the spirit of creativity wash over him and it seemed that life was good and bright and hopeful again. When he paused to try a new chord for the refrain, there was a shuffling noise in the corner.  _ Rats _ . He turned to curse out the foul vermin and saw a child in the corner. The kid had light blonde hair cropped short (just  _ barely _ even) and had a face nearly overwhelmed with bright green eyes. They stared at each other.

“Erm … how can I help you?” Jaskier finally asked.

“Do you know that one that goes  _ do-doo-doo-do-do-doo _ ?” Without thinking, Jaskier mimicked those notes on his lute.

“Sorry, who— who are you?” 

The child — the young girl?? — smiled. “Fiona. You’re the id— bard, right?”

Jaskier grimaced at the word that almost made it out of her mouth. “Yeah that’s me. The ship’s idiot.” 

Fiona grinned. “Geralt says that you have an ear for music, an eye for beauty, and a taste for adventure, but no room for anything else in your head.” Jaskier wished for his cabin to cave in on his head. “But  _ I _ think you’re smart.”

“Maybe just a smart arse,” Jaskier said without thinking.

Fiona laughed. “Well, the last stowaway was dead by the second day, so you’re doing fine.”

He pointedly decided to ignore that comment. “Who is Geralt?”

She leveled A Look at him. “Golden Eyes.”

Jaskier sucked his teeth at her and played the song she had requested. She laughed and started to do a jig and he almost forgot he was a prisoner.

In the middle of his third verse, he heard a whistle and _BOOM_. Some wood shattered overhead, but he kept plucking away. But there was another whistle of air and _BOOM._ He kept playing even though Fiona stopped dancing. He plucked and plucked and plucked at the strings until suddenly there came the unmistakable sounds of a fight from overhead. Jaskier tried to keep a level face for the sake of the child but something about her worried frown seemed off. 

“What is it?” he asked.

Fiona’s head was tilted so she could hear better. “This doesn’t sound right.”

Jaskier scoffed with more bravado than he felt. “Is there a fight that does?” Steps came toward the door, and the sinking feeling from the first time it happened spread through Jaskier. “Hide.” He didn’t realize how stern he sounded until he saw Fiona scramble into a dark corner.

The door burst open to reveal four sailors in Redanian Naval uniforms. 

“Excuse me!” Jaskier shouted at them before they hauled him to his feet and marched him up to the deck.

It was not good.

Several men were dead or dying, splayed out in the dim light of the overcast day. Jaskier looked around past the deck and realized that  _ he could not fucking see any land holy shite it was churning grey water as far as he could fucking see out to the curving fucking horizon in every godsfor-fucking-saken direction _ .

“Sir! Found this one below!”

A man in a bright red coat turned his attention to them. The sabre at his hip flashed when he turned. “Doesn’t look like a pirate to me.”

“A pirate?” Jaskier spluttered, now getting a look at the rest of the  _ living _ people on the deck. The three men from the other week and Yennefer were all on their knees, wrists bound. It seemed that Golden Eyes had returned to wearing the hat over his headscarf. The entire crew was staring at the unfolding scene. If Jaskier had to count, there were maybe ten to fifteen more sailors bound in a similar fashion. “What is going on?” he asked the Redanian captain.

“By order of King Vizimir, we are arresting this crew on the suspicion of falsely flying the colors of Redania and aiding and abetting the kidnapping of Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove.”

Jaskier’s head was swimming. He could fix this. He could definitely fix this! He could make sure that Golden Eyes never wrote him off as a nuisance again. “I am Julian Alfred Pankratz,” he stated, feeling the years of courtly training holding him steady on his feet. “One moment,” he said, as he pulled a ring from his pocket. “My father’s seal.” He could have sworn that he saw every bound crew member wilting. Yennefer was definitely glaring. But he wanted adventure so he would  _ certainly  _ fix this. “Has my father not received my letters, then?”

The officer seemed taken aback. “Letters. Letters that you wrote?”

“Of course. What other letters? I wrote to my father that I had hired a crew to sail me to Kovir for my Grand Tour. Are you telling me that they were misplaced? Oh, why am I asking you. Of course they have been lost!” Jaskier took some delight in watching the man’s face pale. “And why have you treated my crew in such an indecorous manner?”

“My lord, we have had reports of piracy so we fired. When they returned fire under outdated Redanian colors, we assumed the worst.”

Jaskier shook his head and held up his hand in a condescending gesture for the other man to stop speaking. “And why do you think we fired? We too have heard of piracy and assumed that only pirates would fire on old colors. Had I known that this,” he gestured vaguely and airily to the  _ very _ angry Redanians and their  _ very _ confused captives, “was the standard of treatment, I would have had a different plan for my crew.” Time for the final strike. “I shall expect compensation for damages, naturally.”

It seemed that the captain was now really looking over Jaskier. “Are you sure this is your crew?”

“What sort of question is that? Of course they are my crew.” He remembered  _ just _ in time to furrow his brow in bemused skepticism. Thank you, professors of the Dramatic Arts at Oxenfurt.

The captain came closer and  _ sniffed _ at him. “You seem to be … unwell.”

“I have been staying below deck to preserve my color, I’ll have you know, for it is all the rage in Kov — you wouldn’t know anything about that, of course,” Jaskier feigned outrage. “And simply because I haven’t properly bathed does not mean that I’m not  _ well _ , captain. Now. Let’s discuss damages with the officers of my crew, shall we?” He nodded in the direction of Yennefer and Golden Eyes. The captain hesitated, then gestured for his men to undo the ropes.

The older man, the man with the scars (Eksel? Eskel? Yes, that sounded right), and Golden Eyes — Geralt, as Jaskier had learned — staggered to their feet. They cast pleading looks from Jaskier to Yennefer. “Excuse me, captain,” Jaskier inflected as much haughtiness as he dared, “but we also require the presence of the surgeon Yennefer.”

The captain looked askance at him before bursting into laughter. “This  _ woman _ is a surgeon? Now I know you jest.” Jaskier crossed his arms and glared.

“You are out of line, captain. Unbind her.” He could see Yennefer’s eyes glinting murderously but felt only a  _ little _ wary of letting her loose. It seemed that the three men now standing had similar reservations. However, she was unbound with no consequence and Golden Eyes —  _ Geralt, Geralt, Geralt, _ Jaskier reminded himself — led the party through a door some distance from the rest of the crews. The captain signaled for four of his men to join them.

The cabin that  _ Geralt _ led them to was fairly void of any decoration. One long table of sturdy dark wood took up most of the space so everyone present had to shuffle around the edges one at a time to take seats. Jaskier sat adjacent to Geralt, who sat across from the Redanian captain.

“Now, captain,” the bard said. “Let’s start with the cost in life.”

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I would like to hear from folks
> 
> I'm jojofortheroll.tumblr.com if you wanna try to hit the brain pinata for more content ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


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